Category: the C-word

I contacted a couple of artists last night about covers for ‘1919’, ‘the C-word’ and ‘person-hair’. Then, to stop myself being bored, I exported the whole of ‘dreich NOiR’ from WordPress and started ripping out all the extraneous characters. I also watched ‘benefits street’ on 4OD, since people were still arguing about it on Twitter […]

That’s it finished. Another year of NaNo under my belt and another novel first-drafted. I’m so glad it’s over, too. Much as I enjoy the adrenaline, the sheer up-against-it-ness of my month in a parallel universe, I’m looking forward to coming back to earth and catching up on all that sleep, food and personal hygiene […]

I’m well over forty thousand words now, hurtling downhill, using my face and balls as brakes. This novel’s really coming together now (it’s a plus, when you can see yourself fixing what’s wrong with this draft in the next one, right?) Instead of writing profiles for my characters, this time I downloaded photographs and I’ve […]

I’m getting ready for NaNoWriMo. (So yeah, these are written in advance, but the message is the same, right?) I’m writing this at the home of my Superior Half, waiting until it’s time for the train back to the wilderness I call home-and-work-and-shit. I’ve got the house to myself, even the cat has headed off […]

The bairn has neglected to pay the internet again, making it impossible to back this month’s novel up to the cloud. So I’m having to leave two hours early for work – to use in-town wi-fi – and I haven’t a fucking clue what my word count is. I’m praying the bus station has free […]

Walking around Edinburgh, experiencing what Robert Sheckley called ‘metaphoric deformation’. Basically, when we go somewhere unfamilliar, we see people we think we recognise. Then we do a double-take and realise it’s a complete stranger. The first time I remember experiencing this was in Leeds, September of 1979. I was seventeen as I drifted around the […]

This latest draft of ‘the c-word’ is the one where I smooth each section, perfect it. I’m finding this really difficult. I’m impatient to get my fingers into the bastard and start gouging the fucker. I’m going to tough it out, hang on for November and NaNoWriMo. I didn’t do NaNoCamp in August – first […]

That’s me finished the 3rd draft of ‘the c-word’. I’ve probably more-or-less doubled the length of the thing, so it’ll be around fifteen, twenty pages (probably) once I type in all the additions I’ve made. That’s it taken a sort of shape. There’s still polishing to be done, but I’m happy with what it looks […]

I’ve had a bit of a break from ‘the C-word’ this week and caught up with my reading. After all, you can’t produce if you don’t consume – and Garth Merenghi’s the only writer who’s written more books than he’s read. I finished George RR Martin’s ‘a storm of swords’ and started Chelsea Cain’s ‘kill […]

I bit the bullet last week and started on the skeleton of ‘the c-word’. Character will always grow out of plot, while plot almost never begets character. So I started with a loose outline, made a list of characters and fleshed them out. Just a few broad strokes – one character’s irritating laugh, another’s obsession […]